My favourite female spiritual leader of history is probably Yasodhara, wife of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Khadijah wrapped him in a blanket, calmed his nerves, and told him, “You will be the prophet of your people.” She continued by his side, despite the threat her husband’s teachings posed to their family’s lives and livelihood. According to tradition, after his divine revelation, Muhammad returned to his wife in a state of shock.

Khadijah ran a successful caravanning business which supported Muhammad throughout his regular spiritual retreats. The founder of Islam, Muhammad, may never have received a visit from the angel Gabriel if it weren’t for his wife’s business acumen. The better-known Paul plied his missionary craft with the couple, eclipsing them down the ages with his epistolary fame (and injunction against women preaching). Priscilla was a preacher right alongside her husband. Perhaps I could look to Priscilla who, with her husband, Aquila, spread Jesus’s teachings across Asia Minor and Europe at a time when Christians were hunted and killed for their beliefs. Mary Magdalen understood that five loaves of bread, and two fish, can only metaphorically feed five thousand people. The gospels note that Mary Magdalen was one of three women who supported Jesus out of their own financial resources. Then there is Mary Magdalen, who discovered Jesus’s resurrection when she went to anoint his body after death. Mary, you are a mother of all the myriad things.” I can only assume that Mary believed her cousin, because she raised her son to become a god. You are a link in a chain of magical women, snaking back to the beginning, the women who birth the universe. “You are full of grace! Blessed are you, and blessed is your baby. “Hail Mary,” Elizabeth may have said, as the scared young girl laid out her worries before her. I imagine Elizabeth hearing Mary’s news, and shouting poetry at her cousin, helping her to believe that Mary’s baby, no matter how legitimate, was a miracle. Elizabeth was an older woman who had believed herself unable to conceive, but was six months pregnant when Mary arrived at her door. A pregnant and unmarried Mary travelled into the hill country to seek Elizabeth’s advice. Rather than fall at the feet of a woman with a magical womb, I am drawn to her lesser-known cousin Elizabeth.

To retain her son’s deity status, early Church theologians described Mary as a virtuous virgin who conceived Jesus “immaculately,” no body fluids required. Christians believe that Jesus was god incarnate. So who are the women spiritual leaders?īecause of my Christian upbringing, my natural starting point is Mary, the mother of Jesus. But I want a spiritual role model who would have understood how to avert a meltdown at school pickup every day. They were men who did not have to find time for their spirituality between cooking dinners and attending work meetings. For example, Christianity was founded by Jesus, Buddhism by Siddhartha Gautama and Islam by Muhammad. Most of the world’s major religions recognise men as their founders.

Young female models